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Sunday, December 4, 2011

Harvard professor Larry Lessig is one of our foremost authorities on copyright issues, with a vision for reconciling creative freedom with marketplace competition.

1- The Indian state of Bihar has long been a byword for bad governance. It was however governed particularly badly between 1990 and 2005, and has since experienced something of a ‘governance miracle’. How can we account for the 1990–2005 deterioration? Through this working paper - State Incapacity by Design: Understanding the Bihar Story, we will understand that the low state capacity is often a political choice.

3- The War Dogma: This article appears in the July issue of Agenda/Infochange for the theme on the ‘Limits of Freedom’. An insight on Dantewada and Operation Green Hunt.

4- Playing fast and loose by Pratap Bhanu Mehta : A overview of tussle on Janlokpal Bill - A morally insidious vacuum in government. A self-proclaimed civil society displaying its own will to power. A media age where being off-balance gets you visibility. A public whose mood is punitive. An intellectual climate that peddles the politics of illusion.

5- A weakness born of bad intent by Siddharth Varadarajan: - The UPA government's unwillingness to act against the abuse of political and corporate power has created a vacuum which others are rushing to fill.

6- Do you want to be watched? - The new rules under the IT Act are an assault on our freedom. A report by Sunil Abraham who is the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society.

7- "Tragedies darken when their victims refuse to understand the causes. Intellectual failure has thus been the principle deficit; which means the so-called men of intellect are to blame". Interview with Dr. Mobarak Haider, A political activist, scholar and renowned writer of English and Urdu.

8- Demystification of myths by Nadeem F. Paracha - In the last thirty years the number of people in Pakistan who pray regularly and attend collective prayers in mosques has risen three-fold. So have the number of mosques, madressas, Islamic evangelical organizations and religious programming on TV - and yet the rates of rape (including child rape), drug addiction, public humiliation of women has steadily maintained an upward trend.

9- Why dream borrowed dreams? - One of the most seductive myths that the Indian middle class and its elite believes in is that the 21st century is the Indian Century. A deep analysis of this myth by Shiv Visvanathan.